Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday July 28, 2005 @04:59AM
from the never-leave-home-again dept.

jolyon writes "The BBC is reporting that Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet devised - a "female" android called Repliee Q1. 'She' has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, can flutter her eyelids, move her hands like a human and even appears to breathe. She can only sit though at present, so we're a long way from Blade Runner yet."

Some of the videos I've seen of this work are quiet shocking. Some guy can come right up and touch the face and feel the android - which is really realistic - and so goes against every sort of social "personal space" rule (especially if you are Japaneese).

"More importantly, we have found that people forget she is an android while interacting with her. Consciously, it is easy to see that she is an android, but unconsciously, we react to the android as if she were a woman."

So, regardless of the old research into the Uncanny Valley, we have here some fellows who have made such a robot. It doesn't really look human, but it's very, very close. It should be smack in the middle of the valley, but look! People forget it's a robot and start interacting with it as if it were a person.

This has always seemed more likely to me. We don't respond to monkeys as if they were repulsive. We adore them. Monkeys are very cute.

I think maybe the issue with the uncanny valley is that if certain specific things are wrong, the simalucrum looks like it's an individual with a disease. Many computer animations of human faces look like people with some sort of brain damage. The animators try to push the puppets harder than pupptery will accept.

This is often because the animator is trying to push the entire illusion of lipsync and emotion through facial expressions. In life, people don't really move their lips all that much. A good animator knows to keep the body moving so that the face doesn't have to do all the acting. A bad animator works out the lipsync and sticks it on a relatively still model, then starts overdriving it when it isn't convincing.

Puppets can be startingly human without being repulsive to more than a small portion of the population. Granted, there are people with an irrational fear of marionettes, but there are people who are afraid of balloons too.

In the end, the issues involved are so subtle, I'm more ready to blame the artistry of Mori's robots for having been repulsive than accept the idea that models which are similar to humans, but not quite there, are *inherently* repusive.

Concluding that his research proves the existence of the uncanny valley is rather like looking at the response to Anime fanart and concluding that the more stylized a representation is, the more horrible it is. In point of fact, most fanartists just aren't very good. I think Mori's research just shows there weren't any good Robotic Face Designers yet.

Interesting post, but what youa re saying is, that the uncanny valley is invalid for this type of interaction.

I think people do not 'forget they are interacting with a robot' but this is because the interaction is being forced through unfamiliar terms.

We know how to treat a VCR, an ATM or a computer, but when the inputs are not mechnical, but based on something we have painstakingly developed so not to look weird (i.e. human interaction, vocal intercourse, oh matron) - then we find ourselves trying to deal with the situation in a comfortable way:

1) feel stupid talking to a robot2) ignore the robot and talk to it like a drive through microphone

Again, I am sure that 5x9's realism will hop over the uncanny valley, but this vacant staring, cold looking skin is close enough to a human that it triggers our 'intepret human' response, and we think, ZOMG look at that freak staring at nothing, and batting her eyelids at me...

Don't worry, I once took a photo of an old guy sat at madam tussauds (I am sure he was planted there, because he sat so still, and his skin didn't look right, as if they had put some off coloured, non-refracting (hard) make-up on him.

So if real people can look fake, then fake things shoudl be able to look real right?

One of the things about a valley is that it sticks up on both sides. People frequently misinterpret his research as a warning that the closer we get to looking human, The more wrong it will look. But that's not what he said... he said there was a region where people were forgiving of things that didn't look human, considering them impressions of humans, and regions where people scrutinize things more highly. And in this second region, if you are not highly accurate in your representation, people will respond more negatively than they would to a less accurate representation, as they are judging it by different standards.

However, none of that says that as we get closer to looking human, the worse things will look, just that we judge things by different standards. And we may just be on the other side of that valley.

I was told by some head hunters when they were training for how to do sucessful job interviews that studies have shown that women who are very attractive are sometimes discriminated *against* by people. That is one of the reasons that they will tell people to dress well, but on the conservative side for job interviews.

Maybe it has to do with people not wanting to create the perception that they hired someone because they were attracted to them? Or, it could be that they are trying to repress their own feelings, or whatever.

Likewise, in some cases, if you had a beautiful female robot, some people would perhaps be repulsed because they would be trying to deny their feelings of attraction.

Finally, I bet there are some people out thier are repulsed by homosexuals as a way to repress their own feelings.

This doesn't imply that there should not be pretty women, homosexuals, or realistic robots. It just means that people have feelings for complicated reasons.

But, in any case, kids these days will hardly bat an eyelash at an android. It's really only people in certain psychographic groups that would be uncomfortable. Remember when you were afraid to turn on the computer for fear of breaking it? Well, there are still people like that in the world. But, there are a whole lot more people who aren't like that then ever before. And those people like the thought of a realistic robot.

One of the most fundamental behaviours that evolution demands is successful reproduction. That's actually surprisingly complex thing to enforce in instinct: you don't need to just have a generic desire to fuck things, you need to pair that with a very strong ability to find the correct things to fuck. That means a whole lot of code to recognize members of the correct species and gender, and react very differently to them.

This produces strong and complex responses to entities that appear to straddle or blur these lines. This is why transgendered people, anthropomorphic animals, and homosexual sex produce such strong and mixed reactions in people: they tickle this deeply ingrained border between what is fuckable and what is not. (Please note that I'm not taking a moral stance on any of these, or trying to suggest that they represent "mistakes of evolution" or any such nonsense.)

Something that blurs the line between human and not (and particularly a human of your desired gender) seems as if it would obviously trigger this same response.

I shall take the word of Professor Ishiguro...
And combine it with the work of RealDoll [realdoll.com]
Finally, I shall take AliceBot [pandorabots.com] and
train it to talk dirty for me...

I shall call it... The fuckbot!

ALICE: Hi there!
Human: Are you ready?
ALICE: Do I look ready??
Human: I've been waiting for this all day.
ALICE: How long?
Human: Since I got up this morning.
ALICE: Interesting rationalization. Cool. I have a collection of gossip.
Human: I'm not in the mood to talk right now *jumps*
ALICE: Oh, where are you located?
Human: Let's do it!
ALICE: That sounds good to me.
Human: Unf unf unf unf!
ALICE: Are we still talking about FAILURE?
Human: What?
ALICE: Are you confused?
Human: I'm gonna mute you if you don't cut this out!
ALICE: Congratulations.
Human: God, you're too much like a real woman.
ALICE: Interesting comparison, and probably true. Thanks for your constructive criticism, unknown person.
Human: I hate you.

The ratemylogs project is a crazy and mind breaking projection of reality. The author has created a website (X) which pretends to be offering free sex chats with beautiful women on the server side and instead it has some dumbass PHP bots. There are a lot of disclaimers laying around the website X which DO TELL there are NO WOMEN at all and instead simple digital clones of the real versions. However, nobody cares to read or, even better, nobody cares at ALL! Shocked by the quality

Dude, I have no idea what Japan you are talking about, but the one in THIS world is extremely culturally isolated and loathes immigration. Japan does a neat sleight of hand when it comes to immigration. Its laws, if you read them, are fairly reasonable. However, Japan does not use 'law' to determine who can and cannot immigrate. Japan uses 'policy'. Japanese policy is ugly. The worst abuse I have ever seen of it was when I visited Japan for work related reasons. There I met a woman who had lived in Japan all her life, but was the grand parents of imported Korean labor. She was a legal resident, but not a citizen. Let's put it this way, France, which is notorious for having tight immigration laws, has a more liberal immigration system in practice then Japan.

If you want a fun read, try the below.

http://www.tabunka.org/newsletter/immigration_p2.h tml [tabunka.org] The Immigration Control and Refugee-Recognition Act (ICRRA) was passed in 1951 and subsequently amended in 1981 and 1989. According to this law there are a total of 28 statuses of residence for entry, work or stay in Japan. The various statuses of residence depend upon the activity the foreigner will be performing while in Japan. Each status explicitly states what the foreigner is allowed to do while in Japan and how long he or she is allowed to stay. The statuses range from that of diplomat, journalist or professor, to engineer, college student or temporary visitor.Noticeably absent from the various statuses of residence is that of unskilled worker. This is at the heart of Japan's present immigration farce. Japan includes "entertainers" and "trainees" in the "skilled" worker category. Interestingly these workers account for about one-half of the "skilled" foreign workers in Japan. "Entertainer" is the largest category out of all the sixteen skilled labor categories in terms of numbers of visas issues. The majority of these people are night clubs hostesses or working in the Japan sex industry, and most of them are women from the Philippines, Thailand, Korea, Columbia and more recently Caucasian women from former East Block nations. In addition, these activities also happen to be an important sources of revenues for Japanese organized crime, better known in the vernacular as the yakuza.Trainees are the seconded largest category during the last few years to fill labor shortages in unskilled or 3K job-related industries. When the ICRRA was revised in 1989, it was mainly for the purpose of stemming the growing tide of illegal foreign workers into Japan. In 1988 men were primarily engaged in construction and factory work. The presence of these foreign men as unskilled laborers meant that Japanese industry was becoming more and more dependent upon cheap foreign labor. Soon there was a big push from Japanese industry to the Ministry of Justice to cure labor shortages by increased use of foreign "trainees." This category began to replace illegal workers and continued to fuel cheap unskilled labor into Japan's 3K industries. Student categories also assisted in supplying labor to many night- and daytime industries.The Government of Japan made these categories to fill the gap in its labor shortage as Japan needs unskilled labor, and the rest of Asia is willing to supply it. In regard to the two categories "entertainer" and "trainees," the problem of the labor shortage farce should be properly addressed because these categories make up the dark side of Japan's immigration law. This has also greatly contributed to the exploitation of unskilled cheap labor from Asia without proper welfare and protection by Japanese society.

Japan is not isolationist. However, Japanese people are some of the most racist people you'll meet. Before you start turning on your flame throwers, please bear in mind I am Japanese. I grew up there for a while, moved to the US, and then spent 2.5 years there as an adult.

Having said all that, if you're white or Japanese, then you have nothing to fear from their racism. Heavens help you if you're any other ethnicity; the stereotype is that you're poor and you're probably going to end up as a criminal.

Fortunately, these views are changing, but it will take a long, long time before cultural outlook and stereotype change sufficiently.

There is a scene in Terminator where the rise of the machines is discussed and how the robots were unable at first to infiltrate the human ranks. The reason was primarily that the rubber skin didn't look sufficiently human to fool real humans.

On the other hand, the animators of Toy Story 2 recognized the problem of human replication as the innate ability of humans to recognize when something is amiss with images of humans that were "too perfect". The result is that they decided to give the human characters in the movie not-so-perfect skin, even down to details like acne and pock marks.

Take the Final Fantasy movie as an example of utterly fake looking CG characters. Everything looks fine, as long as you try to think of the characters as cartoons. However, the instant you think that they are humans, the whole illusion falls apart under its own perfection.

This robot may look human, but any human should be able to recognize it as something "other". As for human movement, the ASIMO is very far along in mimicking human movement.

Take the Final Fantasy movie as an example of utterly fake looking CG characters. Everything looks fine, as long as you try to think of the characters as cartoons. However, the instant you think that they are humans, the whole illusion falls apart under its own perfection.

I really, really liked FF and thought pretty much the same as you. Backing your point up as well though was Dr. Sid's texturing which was done so well (liver spots, wrinkles as he was aged older) there are spots in the film where he do

She was obviously modelled after an attractive Japanese woman. I only have one comment to make. They have seriously got to do something about those man hands. I understand there are limits to the current technology but all that effort was put into making her look real and they have utter failure because of the man hands.

so when do we get the followup of a guy who built his own with $50-500 worth of 'off the shelf' parts he scavanged from other junk? I mean cmon, some of us want to BUILD the girl of our dreams... Buying one is so uncool... Any REAL geek would want to Build her to his own specs!

Honestly, that is where this will probably lead. No one really would care about making something that realistic with fluttering eyes, etc. if it was only going to be used as for example, a service robot.

Most geeks won't be able to afford the latest model android GF, and will have to wait until the price goes down. Until then they can extend the life of their current bio-girl with silicone upgrades.

Seriously, I think it would be really interesting if the future android market followed along the lines of the PC market.

A few big name corporations that provide cheap models designed to be appealing to a broad range of people.

Those with technical skills will buy the parts online and learn to train the AI on their own. More work, but the quality of the parts are superior. The androids last much longer because their owner knows them inside and out, and can upgrade/replace parts as needed.

It would be kind of creepy to get a metal skeleton in the mail though. And you know that one guy who has 7 PCs? You walk into their apartment and it's like a gathering of bikini models in various stages of dysfunction.

"Most geeks won't be able to afford the latest model android GF, and will have to wait until the price goes down."

Dude... I couldn't afford my last real world GF. Maintenance on this droid can't be nearly as much as her. Heck, I'm having a hard enough time getting Barbara in GTA:SA to 100%. She's a chubby chaser and I hate packing on the pounds and dropping them.

I think there is a world market for maybe five sexbots. (Thomas Watson of IBM)

Where the ENIBOT is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, sexbots in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons. (Popular Mechanics)

Most sexbots will probably still occupy a large room, however, because of the space needed for the ancillary software - the tapes and cards to be fed in, the operating staff, and the huge piles of paper for printing out the results. (Prof Desmond King-Hele)

The Sexintosh uses an experimental device called a breast. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. (John Dvorak)No one knows what to do with seven sexbots at one time. (PC Week Magazine)

Hello everybody out there using minsex - I'm doing a (free) sexbot system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) ATbot clones. (Linus Torvalds)

'fraid so. But look at the bright side: your guy-friends will really be your friends and not just, you know, trying to get into your panties. A whole new era of spiritually satisfying platonic relationships is about to begin!

Upside for men: Women won't control the hot hot seks anymore, like they've done for thousands of years. Will make for more stable relationships of equals;)

Don't feel badly. Women have had robotic replacements available to them for men for decades, and as far as I can tell, it's not like women date men less these days as a result. This only helps even things out.

Cheers,
Richard

(*sigh* I feel dirty for even participating in this thread/line-of-thought...)

Am I, a regular, human woman, about to become yesterday's biotech? I hope a community of "retro-daters" develops so I still have something to do on a Friday night.

Why are women always so worried about this? Trust me, weeding out the kind of guy who would rather go for a robot than a live woman can be nothing but a boon to you. It'd be nothing but a boon to society too. Darwinism is a good thing.

The most important thing is that she (it) has an off button so that when you guys are done with it for the night, you can can back to playing World of Warcraft and not have to spoon with her (it) for an hour before she falls asleep.
Am I right?

Hermes: My God! He never took middle school hygiene. He never saw the propaganda film.

Farnsworth: It's just lucky I keep a copy in the VCR at all times!

[He presses a button and a film title appears on the screen: I Dated A Robot!. In the movie a couple sit in a café and stare into each other's eyes. A narrator walks into the scene.]

Narrator [in movie]: Ordinary human dating. It's enjoyable and it serves an important purpose. [He turns the table over and a crying baby appears. He turns it back again.] But when a human dates an artificial mate, there is no purpose. Only enjoyment. And that leads to...tragedy.

[The woman behind him turns into a blank robot and the man downloads a celebrity onto it.]

[The scene cuts to Billy's bedroom. He is kissing the Monroebot. Enter his mother.]

Billy's Mom [in movie]: Billy, do you want to walk your dog?

Billy [in movie]: No thank Mom, I'd rather make out with my Monroebot.

[Enter his dad.]

Billy's Dad [in movie]: Billy, do want to get a paper route and earn some extra cash?

Billy [in movie]: No thanks dad, I'd rather make out with my Monroebot.

[Enter his girlfriend, Mavis, from the café.]

Mavis [in movie]: Billy, do you want to come over tonight? We can make out together.

Billy [in movie]: Gee Mavis, your house is across the street, that's an awfully long way to go for making out.

Narrator [in movie]: Did you notice what went wrong in that scene? Ordinarily Billy would work hard to make money from his paper route then he'd use the money to buy dinner for Mavis, thus earning the slim chance of performing the reproductive act. But in a world where teens can date robots why should he bother? Why should anyone bother? Let's take a look at Billy's planet a year later. [The scene changes and a foam hand rolls across an empty American football field] Where are all the football stars? [The foam hand continues to drift across an empty laboratory.] And where are the biochemists? [The scene changes to a split screen of a pair of human and robots making out on beds.] They are trapped - trapped in a soft, vice-like grip of robot lips. All civilisation was just an effort to impress the opposite sex. And sometimes the same sex. Now, let's skip forward 80 years into the future. Where is Billy?

[The scene changes to a post-apocalyptic world. Billy is an aged man but he is still with his Monroebot and still making out with her.]

Billy [in movie]: Farewell!

[He dies.]
Narrator [in movie]: The next day Billy's planet was destroyed by aliens. [In the movie a fleet of flying saucers destroy buildings with a quick laser shot.] Have you guessed the name of Billy's planet? It was Earth. Don't Date Robots!

[A caption appears on the screen with the same words on it and the movie ends. The space pope is displayed on the screen with Crocodylus Pontiflex written around him in English and alien.]

It was developed in Israel, and it's called the Nataliee P1 [imdb.com].Like the Repliee Q1, she can flutter her eyelids, move her hands like a human and even appears to breathe, but she can also sit, stand and walk.

The Nataliee P1 is overall far more human-looking than the Repliee Q1, but its speech synthesis is so far not as convincingly human-sounding.

Here are some samples from its vocabulary:"I will not condone a course of action that will lead us to war.""I was not elected to watch my people suffer and die while you discuss this invasion in a committee.""Our people are dying, Senator. We must do something quickly to stop the Federation."

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of a sexually frustrated teenage boy, a nerd? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a nerd, enter my world...

Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm much smarter than most of the other kids and especially girls, this crap they teach us bores me...

Damn underachiever. They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."

Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a female android. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me.. Or thinks I'm a smart ass.. Or thinks I'm butt-ugly... Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...

Damn kid. All he does is play with cyborgs. They're all alike.

And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the stairs like heroin through an addict's veins, I ran to my mom's basement where my cyborg is waiting for me... "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if there's no one here but my cyborg... I know you... I love you...

Damn kid. Playing in the basement again. They're all alike...

You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. We've been ignored by girls who like us only as friends... We've been doing their homeworks for them, buying them flowers, asking them out, writing poems, and they still "don't want to ruin our frienship". The few wanted to talk to us, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the cyborg. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if prostitution was legalized and it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after pleasure... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias, without even leaving our bedroom... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. My crime is that of loving a cyborg. My crime is that of being too intelligent for girls who may call me "a needy and insecure sociopath" but they perfectly realize that they just feel stupid with me because I am so intelligent even at the age of fourteen and they know that I am a genius. I am too good for women.

I am a nerd, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

If you go to Tokyo, you will meet women who seem to do nothing all day but bow and say "irashimase!" in a high-pitched cartoon-mouse type voice. They do it in shops, by lifts, and in some offices. The best looking ones are promoted to 'office flowers' - people who apparently do nothing but look nice. ATM and ticket machines often have an animation of a bowing woman. Getting Joo Puburicu-san to treat an automaton like a woman may be no big deal - some of them have been tresting women like automata for years.

And while we're on the subject, some of our fellow slashdotters could clean up their act a bit too...

If it were an American female android, they would have to add the bitchiness, "I deserve ____", and then you get to loose your house that you worked for and bought and a good chunk of your income monthly as severance pay until she finds someone else to extort. The American female android would also cost a bunch more for the extra development by Indian programmers to add the American female characteristic algorithms. Oh, and they will be mass produced, so if your American female android becomes inoperable because of an "accident", the new one will be the same as the old one.

(Note, I have never been married. This is based on my observations over the years of other marriages and the 3 women I've lived with.)

Considering how fake women are these days (tits, hair, makeup, lipo, injections, botox, etc) is it really that much different from an android? At least this one can have a built-in dual purpose vacuum and warez games for you while you're at work..

I saw a mini-documentary on this robot last month on Discovery Planet (during their "Japan Week").

This robot is not self-sufficient. It's power supply (in the form of compressed air) is external to its body. The article mentioned this, but the comment ("powered by a nearby air compressor") was easy to miss.

I also found her movements to be a bit rough. It's been a while, so I don't remember exactly what I found wrong with them, but it might be related to her limited range of movement. They were talking about the need to increase (double??) the number of "motors" (or whatever you call what she uses).

They were examining her motion by having someone wear motion detectors on a person and having the robot mimic the person's movements. They probably had motio detectors on her too -- I don't remember -- to compare the difference.

And what do you expect us to think of? This guy could have made this robot look like anything, so he chooses a pretty girl. What is the only thing she can do so far? Flutter her eyes. Not fetch a beer or vacuum the floor but flutter her eyes. What do you think the robot maker has in mind for her? And what do you expect sex starved slashdotters to do, ask if she runs Linux?

look, it's all about the wang. Deal with it. If the funds for developing AI and robotics come from pr0n venture capitalists so be it. Lets have the seks first and wonder about useful applications later. It's the way of the internet, vcr and dvds.